the Goliath of Force opposed to him fairly between the eyes with this shining pebble of an Idea, which was the only weapon at his command, if, at the last moment, his aim had not been deflected, and the target shifted by the treachery of the handful of men who in the Ukraine were resisting by every means in their power the natural development of the Soviets. These men, preferring to sell their country to Germany than to lose the reins of government themselves, opened separate negotiations, thereby breaking the unity of the ideal front which Trotzky opposed to the Germans. The Germans saw that with part of that front they could come immediately to terms. Instantly their tone in the negotiations changed. They persuaded their own people that the Russians were themselves to blame for not getting the peace they required, and that a just peace was only possible with the Ukraine. Meanwhile the soldiers and the workers of the Ukraine were gradually obtaining complete power over their own country, so that when actually Germany concluded peace with the Ukraine, the so-called government whose signatures were attached to that treacherous agreement were actually in asylum in German headquarters and unable to return to their own supposed capital except under the protection of German bayonets. The Soviet triumphed in the Ukraine, and declared its solidarity with Russia. The Germans, like the Allies, preferred to recognize the better dressed persons who were ready to conclude peace with them in the name of a country which had definitely disowned them. From that moment the Brest peace negotiations were doomed to failure. Trotzky made a last desperate appeal to the workers of Germany. He said, “We will not sign your robber’s peace, but we demobilize our army and declare that Russia is no longer at war. Will the German people allow you to advance on a defenseless revolution?”
The Germans did advance, not at first in regular regiments, but in small groups of volunteers who had no scruples in the matter. Many German soldiers, to their eternal honor, refused to advance, and were shot. The demobilization of the Russian army meant little, because it had long ceased to be anything but a danger to the peaceful population in its rear. The Soviet had only the very smallest real force, and that, as yet, unorganized, with enthusiasm but without confidence, utterly unpractised in warfare, consisting chiefly of workmen, who, as was natural, were the first to understand what it was they had to defend. It
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